Western retailers are scrambling to get in front of the news that textile workers in Bangladesh are facing violence and persecution after their strike last month.
Shortly before Christmas, tens of thousands of Bangladeshi workers protested for higher pay in their first organized strike since the 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza factory, which killed 1,134 people. The workers demanded a tripling of their current salary of 5,300 taka a month (approximately $60 USD), which is currently the lowest minimum wage in the world.
According to the Guardian, police used rubber bullets to disperse the crowds and arbitrarily arrested 30 people under controversial wartime laws that were designed to quash threats to state security.
The unrest forced around 50 factories to shut down for more than a week and led to the “temporary dismissal” of 1,500 – 3,000 workers. The names of said workers are now on an alleged blacklist, making the wage activists un-hirable and targets of police harassment, some are even avoiding their own homes out of fear.
As news of the response to the strike has spread around the world, a number of western retailers that manufacture in the area have gone on the defensive, distancing themselves from factory owners, and / or starting pilot projects to improve working conditions.
However, none of those programs include a raise in pay, and as long as that’s the case there will be, in the words of the country’s own labor minister, Mujibul Haque, “no scope to increase the wages of ready-made garment workers…”
You can read more about the strikes, and subsequent crackdowns, at The Guardian and Handelsblatt Global.
